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Monday, June 26, 2017

Democrats' Diminishing Brand

Donald Trump has record disapproval ratings for a president early in his first term. Congressional Democrats and mainstream media tell us so repeatedly, reporting little else but alleged collusion with Russians. Yet his congressional candidates keep winning special elections despite being vastly outspent.

They cannot understand it. Trump is their antithesis. He enrages both, fears neither, but voters like that. Do Congress and mainstream media not realize they have approval ratings lower than Trump’s?

Trump can be crude, egotistical. He bragged about grabbing women. He stretches truth to look good, yet voters accept him warts and all. They know a lot of guys just like him. Every corner bar has them. They can be tiresome but they’re harmless, and deep down most are nice guys. Tell them they’re full of sh** and they laugh, because they know they often are. They don’t take themselves too seriously, unlike hysterical Democrats and solemn talking heads who claim leaving the Paris climate change treaty will destroy the world and repealing Obamacare will kill thousands of Americans.

Voters like borders around their country and they want them enforced. They don’t like being called bigots because they want American citizenship to mean something. They want people to work for a living if they’re able and they resent supporting deadbeats. Despite Democrat media denials, they know they’re paying for lots of them because some are neighbors and relatives. They know many illegal immigrants are on welfare and working under the table too. They know this pushes their wages down and their taxes up no matter what Democrats media claim.

When the majority of the FBI’s most wanted terrorist are Muslim, they know there’s a connection with Islam. They don’t like Democrat media calling them racist for saying it. They don’t understand why, but they detect some kind of solicitous interdependence between radical Islam and Democrat media. When someone shouts “Allahu Akbar!” while killing people here or in Europe, voters know immediately it’s a Muslim terrorist — even though media claim for days or weeks — or even years to be puzzled about motive.

They know it can be a sacrifice to raise children but it’s wrong to kill them in the womb. They know that’s what abortion does no matter what Democrat media claim. They don’t like being accused of a “war on women” for saying it either. They know Planned Parenthood is all about abortion (330,000 per year) and doing pap tests (380,000 a year) helps mask that. They don’t believe Democrat media insistence their tax money isn’t spent on abortions.

They know being called “non-college-educated-white-men” is a put down. They believe Hillary spoke for most Democrats and media when she called them “racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic — you name it.” They believe media think them deplorable, bitterly clinging to guns and religion as Barack Obama claimed. They’re not fooled when racism is called Affirmative Action. When blacks, Hispanics, and women are given preference, they know it’s white men who are sent to the back of the bus. It’s especially galling when after nearly three generations of “Affirmative Action,” they’re called “privileged” and told to “renounce” it.

When Democrats and media hit Trump he hits back — and voters love that. Some Democrats like Ohio Representative Tim Ryan are starting to get it: “I think, in part, we try to slice the electorate up. And we try to say, ‘You’re black, you’re brown, you’re gay, you’re straight, you’re a woman, you’re a man.’ The reality of it is there’s no juice in that kind of campaign,” he said.

Will Democrat leaders listen? Will their media partners? Maybe they will if they keep losing.

16 comments:

The problems for the Democrats are1) they currently don't stand for anything more than Russia-gate2) When they do stand for something they are nearly indistinguishable from moderate Republicans. The Dems have sucked up to the corporations and are as hawkish on war. This has alienated their Progressive wing.

"Donald Trump has record disapproval ratings for a president early in his first term. "I guess this comes from the scientifical polling data that tried desperately to tell us who "we" NEED to send money to, and SHOULD vote for, on a daily basis, broken down by sex, gender, race, educational participation certificate, age, geography, and ancestral origin. I wonder how many recently fired "experts", appointed by previous entourage, have now found work at "oppo research" firms, because....math. CaptDMO

Are you sure they know being referred to as "non-college educated whites" is a put down?http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2016/10/14/fox-news-poll-clinton-leads-trump-by-7-points.htmlThis foxnews poll reads, "Trump’s the pick for men (+5 points), whites (+14), and whites without a college degree (+25)." Do you think Foxnews is putting them down when they refer to this precise demographic, or is it only the rest of the media that you're so sure intends it as an insult?

Fox News and its talking heads are not immune to the pomposity that comes with anchoring news. It's pollsters aren't either. They look at America through the eyes of coastal elites and see dumb white guys in the middle of the country and sophisticated, "nuanced," educated, and cultured people like themselves on the edges. How they choose to distinguish demographic groups reflects their thinking.

But you don't identify Fox or any conservative media in your blog. You only refer to “Democrat media.” But the bigger point here is you veer off course in order to step into the same pitfall some many other partizan opinionists step into. That pitfall is the irresistible urge to tell your audience not what you KNOW is true, but what you HOPE is true, and you present it as certainty. You simply don't know if pollsters identify the demographic of non college educated whites with the intent to insult, but you so desperately want it to be true that you declare it as fact. There's nothing insulting about it, but the opinion media on which you subsist has you convinced you belong to some oppressed majority that you see victimhood everywhere. You've written a number of times that Obama got elected because of white guilt. Where is the empirical evidence you always clamor for when reading any liberally oriented thesis? There are no exit polls with that information. Just like the claim about non college educated whites, you simply make this stuff up, because you really want it to be true. The opinion media succeeds because they know there is a substantial percentage of citizens who are never so unified as when they rally behind fear or anger. If they can keep us afraid, all the better, but in the absence of fear, they'll settle for keeping us angry. So opinionists trot out garbage assumptions – coached in terms of certainty – for the sole purpose of keeping their audiences angry. They tell us how insulted we should feel, because only they know the true, insidious subtext of something as innocuous as “non-college educated whites.” It's lazy thinking, and it's lazy writing.

It's insight into the way demographers look at America. It's also how Democrats look at America as Congressman Tim Ryan says. Why not separate out black high school dropouts? Why not tell the Census Bureau to stop categorizing us by race? Because government, and especially government when controlled by Democrats, are obsessed by race.

It used to be in America that everyone was entitled to their own opinion but everyone is not entitled to their own facts.

Mr. McLaughlin was a history teacher. From what I learned in school, the 13 colonies were a colonies of the British. If one of Mr. McLaughlin's students had stood up in class and said that America was really founded by space aliens and that the truth is being covered up, would Mr. McLaughlin have treated the student with respect and tried to explain why it wasn't true or would he have just laughed at the student? If he just laughed, would he then be an arrogant elitist? Now fast forward a few years. There are millions of people who believe the space alien story and are demanding that schools should "Teach the Controversy." They have tens of thousands of websites teaching their version of history. How do you tell a new student that the U.S. was not founded by space aliens when there are thousands of websites dedicated to the idea, Congressman are saying it's right, bills are being passed daily to try to force teachers to teach it and anyone who tries to say it's nonsense is labeled as an elitist liberal?

Now that there are no sources of information that are accepted as accurate by everyone, how can someone know what's true and what's a lie?

The Planned Parenthood example used in the article is a good example. Per http://www.cnn.com/2015/08/04/health/planned-parenthood-by-the-numbers/index.htmlPP provided 323,999 abortions in 2014 and they did 490,000 breast exam procedures. The article that Mr. McLaughlin provided stopped there. They didn't mention the 1.1 million pregnancy tests, 2 million people who got reversible contraception, prenatal care for 17,000 people, sex education classes to 1.5 million people among other services.

How would you measure the percentage? The way PP measures it is what percentage of people who use some type of PP service end up getting an abortion. It's like saying that a hospital only does heart transplants by comparing the number of heart transplants to lung transplants and ignoring all of the other things hospitals do.

I can understand people being against abortions but I cannot approve of people lying to try to get people on their side.

I am a firm believer in science. Science is a process. Scientists spend years and years gathering evidence. Then they come up with ideas to explain the evidence. Then they argue about it until most of them agree that one explanation is the best one based on the evidence that has been gathered over decades.

I know it makes me an elitist to believe that if thousands of scientists who have spent their entire working lives gathering and analysing data over a long period of time are more likely to be right than a person who is going by their gut feelings.

People's gut feelings are that all people are either a man or a woman. And this is true for most of the people you would meet. But scientists studying the rare exception find that this isn't true. There are people who look like man/woman but whose thought patterns are more like the opposite gender. There is physical evidence like cat scans to confirm this. Now I understand that this idea makes people uncomfortable and their gut feelings say it's not true but I have to go with the evidence, not a gut feeling.

"I know it makes me an elitist to believe that if thousands of scientists who have spent their entire working lives gathering and analyzing data over a long period of time are more likely to be right than a person who is going by their gut feelings."No, it doesn't make you an elitist. It merely shows willful ignorance of the scientific method proven conformation bias, "institution" loyalty, career insurance, and desperate fear of social/professional ridicule for failure to recognize the fine cut and quality of The Emperor's New Clothes. Hundreds of women died from Vienna's Maternity wards because thousands of scientists agreed, Ignaz Sammelweiss was an idiot.No, the Sun DOESN'T rise in the east, over a flat Earth, as thousands of "experts" on the subject once pronounced as THE TRUTH!!!!! but it sure is easy to think of it that way to folks incapable of comprehending, or caring, how much (ie)A million actually is.Scientists studying the rare exception (SEE: Galileo's Middle Finger-Alice Dreger)makes for a poor basis of ...say...Legislated workplace "position" quotas and salaries, locker room assignments based on "CAT scans PROVE...". In fact, "science" has the habit of EXCLUDING "The Rare exception" entirely in "data", unless it suits their fancy to make the "data" PROVE the otherwise unworkable emotionally appeasing delusions. And let's not even discuss the "Social" sciences (NOT to be confused with the waning American History field, once known as Social Studies) disingenuous abuse of "reporting", via. The Scientific Method."1-in-5 people surveyed feel they are on the borderline of the spectrum in (fill in the blank)...." means...nothing, except maybe to those who feel themselves "expert", via. "data", of Political "Science". IMHO of course. CaptDMO

You point out cases in the 18th and 19th centuries where doctors and others were proved wrong. The examples you show are good examples of why science works. Ignaz Sammelweiss came up with the idea that keeping a patient clean would reduce the incidence of infection. Many doctors of the time who relied on traditional medicine and gut feelings were against him. But the newer doctors coming up came in with an open mind. They were willing to look at the data and within a generation Ignaz Sammelweiss's methods became standard.

Yes, science does tend to exclude the rare exception. Sometimes because it was an obvious error. I.E. if a list of data says that the high temperature in NYC on a certain date was 1000 degrees, it's a typographical error. If something interesting shows up once but the scientists never see it again or can't make it happen again it is impossible to study until they can get more evidence.

Rogue waves are a good example of this situation. None of the scientific models predicted rogue waves. There were no films or other documented evidence of them happening. There were many eye witness accounts but no proof. So scientists basically said that they may exist but without any evidence there's nothing to look at. In the 1980's, ships started filming examples of rogue waves so scientists now had data to work with and they started to redesign their models. Once there was evidence, scientist's have something to work with.

Things like bigfoot, UFO's, or the Loch Ness Monster fall in this category. Maybe there's something there but the evidence that exists is either weak or proven to be a hoax. There just isn't enough there for scientists to justify spending millions of dollars to investigate. But if someone could give scientist a dna sample of an unknown creature, scientist would be more than willing to investigate claims of Bigfoot or Nessie.

You are railing against modern science and medicine. What do you propose to put in its place? Yes science is not perfect. Sometimes it takes years to correct a mistake. But eventually it does correct its own errors and gut feeling is a very poor alternative.

There's some evidence that the sitting president of the U.S. colluded with a foreign power to help him get elected and congress has done nothing. The Clintons were investigated over and over again for years, in some cases decades but nothing was ever proven. So republicans can accuse the Clintons of wrongdoing with little evidence to back it up for decades and that's okay but the Democrats cannot ask for an investigation of Trump even though there is a fair amount of evidence that something is going on.

Democrat's claim that repealing Obamacare will kill thousands of American's because repealing Obamacare will kill many thousands of Americans. Just not all at once. When someone has to stop taking their heart medication because it costs $1000 a month without Obamacare and $100 a month with Obamacare, it won't kill them instantly. It might take years, but it will happen eventually.

I don't know what the mainstream media can do. The mainstream media relies on experts who have spent years studying issues. If a Republican say's that 2+2=7, should the mainstream media just say yes sir and go along with the thousands of websites that pop up and demand that schools start teaching our children that 2+2=7 or should they call a liar a liar? Unfortunately for many conservatives transgender is a real thing, that has plenty of science behind it. Many people don't like their children learning about the real world but it exists. If some child in kindergarten older sister is now their older brother, should the teacher be prevented by law from talking about it. And if the other children are from religious families and they do what many religious people do and start bullying their classmate because of their now older brother, should the teacher allow the bullying to avoid being accused of religious discrimination?

Most terrorists on the FBI's most wanted list are Muslims. That doesn't mean that most Muslims are terrorists. Almost all serial killers in the U.S. are white men. Does that mean that most white men are serial killers?

When people shout's "Allahu Akbar!" while killing people people know it's a Muslim terrorist. When someone shouts "Jesus!" when killing people in the U.S. the media go out of their way to avoid saying its a Christian terrorist. This has been happening regularly in the U.S. but it's never broadcast on the news.

If you looked at a typical Trump rally, you would see almost all white people with many of them flying the Nazi or Rebel flag. Hillary made a mistake by using the word deplorable even though it is an accurate description of someone who is a card carrying member of the KKK or Nazi party, who were the earliest and most vocal early Trump supporters. She should have specified that it's that particular large group of Trump supporters that were deplorable. I'll admit that there are problems with the way Affirmative Action is sometimes handled but I don't like the idea of a company with a thousand people in a major city with all white men.

The problem with colleges and liberals is that conservatives in the U.S. are believing in things that are getting further and further from reality. If a college insists that they only teach reality, they have a liberal bias. My favorite recent far right story was on the Alex Jones show. One of Alex's guest is saying that NASA has a secret base on mars for pedophiles. And colleges are supposed to take stuff like that seriously or they risk being called liberals.

I was late reading this column but was very glad to see that Tom has already been taken care of by thinking people who do not believe in Alternative Facts. Just a couple of further comments:

Tom's trying to pass off Trump as being similar to a person in a bar who would laugh when you tell them they’re full of sh** is, well....full of sh**. Trump takes himself WAY serious, making him an even bigger joke. He would NEVER laugh off a person who correctly called him full of sh**. How can Tom not see this?? He does, he is just dishonest about it.

Also, Tom trying to pretend that Trump is ramming his "agenda" past Democrats, and that somehow he is "winning" is ludicrous! Trump can't get sh** done!! Too busy tweeting and whining about his inner circle continually being caught in more Russia related lies. I am worried that Trump might get impeached too soon, allowing dim-witted Pence to take over and maybe accomplish something.

And people like Tom eat up the lies, grinning and asking for more. Trying to make excuses for the constant lies and pretending that they are not important, and that if Obama's people had been caught having secret meetings with some Muslim country who interfered in our elections, they wouldn't be marching to DC with their guns. Nope, now it is "whatever, nothing to see here..." Whistling past the graveyard.

Anyway, fantastic job by Steve and scenario in pointing out Tom's lunacy!!!

Democrats shrinking brand??!!?? Wow, talk about wishful thinking! You can fantasize about voters wanting this and that, but the pure undeniable truth is that our society has been becoming more socially liberal for ages - since we owned slaves, since women couldn't vote, since child-labor and horrid working conditions, since civil rights, since gays couldn't get married, since inter-racial marriages were not accepted....it is simply a matter of time until the trans community is also accepted.

Tell us about diminishing brands again after the '18 and '20 elections!

Tom sure isn't immune to the pomposity that comes with writing columns. Funny how he was a part of two areas which he detests - the media and teaching! Both fields are improved without dishonest hacks like him.